DCC UV Stitch Padding and Thickness Workflow Guide

1. Define the texture target first

Record final texture resolution, expected down-mip, texel density, UV set, tile policy, normal basis, and destination compression. UV decisions depend on the smallest mip that must remain clean, not only the authoring canvas. Mark hard edges, material borders, mirrored regions, and areas requiring unique bake information. Duplicate the approved mesh before seam work so topology and material assignments remain comparable.

2. Place seams by distortion and visibility

Cut where the surface cannot flatten without excessive stretch, where a hard normal split already exists, or where the seam is naturally hidden. Avoid long spiraling islands and tiny slivers. Keep curved hero surfaces continuous when practical. A seam is a production trade: it reduces distortion but increases border length and padding cost. Use a checker and distortion heat map from representative camera distances rather than judging the UV editor alone.

3. Unfold with controlled constraints

Run Unfold after pinning anchors only where orientation or shared alignment matters. Choose an algorithm suitable for organic versus hard-surface shapes and preserve aspect where required. Inspect flipped faces, scale variation, and angular distortion. Relaxing repeatedly cannot repair poor seam topology. Compare measured texel density across shells, then normalize by priority. Keep lightmap or simulation UV requirements separate from the material UV set.

4. Stitch only compatible borders

Use Stitch when two borders correspond topologically, share intended scale, and can join without unacceptable distortion or overlap. Align orientation and inspect the resulting shell before committing. Do not stitch across purposeful material, normal, or mirrored boundaries simply to reduce island count. On a cylindrical prop, stitch straight side strips while leaving cap borders separate. After each join, rerun overlap and distortion checks because one bad connection can fold an entire shell.

5. Calculate padding from the lowest mip

Texture Padding must cover filtering, mip generation, compression blocks, and potential atlas resampling. A practical rule starts from required padding at the lowest used mip and scales it up by powers of two to authoring resolution. For example, two safe pixels at mip 4 require at least thirty-two pixels at the base level. Match baker dilation and packer gutter; transparent empty borders can bleed just as badly as adjacent islands.

6. Bake thickness with a defined meaning

A Thickness Map estimates distance or occlusion through nearby opposite surfaces and is commonly used for subsurface masks, wear, or procedural effects. Define ray direction, maximum distance, normalization, cage, and whether separate pieces may influence one another. Thin cloth, open shells, intersecting parts, and unit errors can create misleading values. Inspect the grayscale result alone and compare known thin and thick regions instead of trusting a material preview.

7. Work a creature UV decision

A creature head needs continuous cheek gradients but hidden seams behind ears and under the jaw. Unfold preserves the face as one major shell; ear backs remain separate and are stitched only where distortion stays below tolerance. The 4K texture must survive to mip 4, so base Texture Padding is set to thirty-two pixels. Thickness baking excludes teeth and eyes, preventing them from darkening facial subsurface response.

8. Read failure patterns correctly

Diagonal checker stretch points to insufficient seams or poor constraints. A shell that flips after Stitch indicates mismatched border orientation. Colored fringes at distance reveal inadequate dilation or neighboring-island contamination. Wavy normal seams can come from tangent or triangulation mismatch, not padding. A uniformly white Thickness Map suggests ray distance or units are too small; dark cavities everywhere suggest cross-mesh hits or an excessive search distance.

9. Submit UV and bake evidence

Deliver UV snapshots with seams, density overlay, distortion view, overlap report, island count, pack efficiency, base resolution, lowest approved mip, calculated padding, and baker settings. Include isolated Thickness Map, exclusion groups, cage view, and engine mip screenshots. Approval requires no unintended overlaps or flips, bounded distortion, consistent priority density, sufficient gutters at the target mip, and thickness values that correspond to measured geometry.

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